Yi-ho Ahn has studied traditional style singing at National High School of Traditional Arts and Seoul National University. He got awarded from Jeonju Festival (Second prize), Haenam Traditional Music Competition (Grand prize) and Korean Broadcasting System Traditional Music Competition (First prize). He was invited to perform for the festivals such as Edinburgh International Festival (2011), Osterfestival Tirol (2012) and Canada New Music Concerts (2013). He has recorded the works of composer Kim Youngdong and also featured in several Korean films’ sound track.
Woonjung Sim, the winner of World Music Award (2009) and Experimental Spirit Award (2010) of the 21st Century Korean Music Project Competition organized by Korean government, is a percussionist who has been recognized for her excellent musical talent and accomplishments nationwide. Woonjung was recently funded by the grant of Artist-in-residency through Korean government for seeking a new direction of Korean music in New York City in 2011. While living in New York City, she held improvisational she held improvisational music concerts such as in Clemente Soto Velez, Vaudeville Park, Downtown Music gallery, and Zebulon with various musicians that she met in the city. She also recorded and released her album with the members of an ensemble, Janya that she organized as a principal player and a composer, and debuted in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Active as a percussionist, Woonjung played in a concert tour for celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Seoul National University across five cities in the US in 2005, and successfully performed in the Smithsonian Museums, Washington, DC in 2008. In 2010, she also participated in the International Symposium "Inheritance of Folk Culture" held at Akita University in Japan, and the International Country Music Week, Zhangjiajie, china. And she has participated in the Asia Improvisation Arts Exchange annually since 2013.
Eun Sun Jung is an award-winning gayageum player. She has actively engaged in performing across countries including France, Belgium, Germany, the U.K., Japan, and the U.S. In the U.S., she has performed at the J. F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She also has held a solo recital in New York City and performed at various venues in Manhattan. She has toured doing lecture concerts in colleges in the U.S., including Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Syracuse, Hunter College, and University of Hartford. She has released two full-length albums in the U.S. She was a lecturer at Kûgak (Korean Traditional Music) National Middle School and is currently a member of Kûmam, an organization established for preservation of Korean traditional music. She graduated from Kûgak National High School, and earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Seoul National University.
Hwang Byungki (1936-2018) was the foremost South Korean player of the gayageum, a 12- string zither with silk strings. He was also a composer and an authority on sanjo, a form of traditional Korean instrumental music. In 1951 he began playing the gayageum at The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts in Seoul, where he studied under the renowned gayageum masters Kim Yeong-yun, Kim Yun-deok, and Shim Sang-geon. In 1959 he graduated from Seoul National University School of Law. In 1962 he began composing concert and film music using traditional Korean instruments.
He presented the premiere performance of Alan Hovhaness's Symphony no. 16 in South Korea in 1963. In 1964 he traveled around the world to Europe, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian countries, giving gayageum performances in each place. In 1985 he served as visiting professor of Korean Music at Harvard University. In 1990 he led a group of musicians from the South Korea at the Pan-Korean Unification Concert in Pyongyang, North Korea. After producing his fifth gayageum album in 2007, Hwang continued to compose innovative Korean music. Ranging in style from the evocation of traditional genres to avant-garde experimentation, a selection of these pieces is available on a series of five albums. He was an emeritus professor of Korean music at Ewha Womans University. Hwang also taught a course entitled ″Introduction to Korean Traditional Music″ at Yonsei University in Seoul. Hwang served on the government's Cultural Properties Preservation Committee, and in 2000 was appointed to the National Academy of Arts.
Shinuh Lee’s career as a composer started when she took her first composition lessons with Unsuk Chin. Lee studied composition with Sukhi Kang at Seoul National University, and later with Michael Finnissy at the Royal Academy of Music, the University of London, and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. She is now Professor of composition at Seoul National University. While she studied in the U.K., Lee won a number of prizes from various competitions and music festivals, which include the Musical Times Composers’ Competition, Cornelius Cardew Composers' Competition, and was a finalist at ISCM World Music Days,
Gaudeamus Composers’ Competition, and Leonard Bernstein International Jerusalem Composing Competition. After returning to Korea, she also received Korean Composition Award, AhnEakTae Composition Award, Grand Prize for the Korean Race Composition Award, Nanpa Music Award, and the Young Artist Today Award from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Korea. Her pieces have been performed by many major ensembles and orchestras such as Ixion Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, the Korean Chamber Ensemble, Philharmonia Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, Seongnam Philharmonic Orchestra, Changwon Philharmonic Orchestra, and KBS Symphony Orchestra. Since writing her orchestral piece 《Psalm 20》 (1994‐96, revised in 1998), her music has developed into a new direction. The music written while Lee lived in the U.K. can be understood, as a whole, to be part of the acoustic and phenomenological current of the late 20th‐century European music. In her later works such as the Violin Concerto《Invisible Hands》(2000/2002), Piano Concerto《A song of joy》 (2001/2003), and《An open door》 (2004) for Strings, Lee has shown interest in the sin, suffering, and redemption of mankind, and has explored on the musical expression of these themes. As a part of research on these themes, she has embarked on writing a cycle which includes a Violin Fantasy, Piano Fantasy, the Homage Series, and Choral Fantasy in 2006. Currently Shinuh Lee is the Music Director of The Pathway Concert Series and Studio 2021, a new music series by the College of Music at Seoul National University.
Jihyun Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1988. Her composed pieces have been performed at the festivals in Korea such as the Korean Music Expo, the Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival, the Pann Music Festival, and the 2016 ISCM World Music Days. Her works have also been performed in the United States, Brazil, and Europe, including the SCI Conference, the 2017 John Donald Robb Composers’ Symposium, the 2017 ISCM New Music Miami Festival, the 2018 Oregon Bach Festival, the Earshot Workshop, and the International Symposium of New Music at Curitiba. Additionally, she won the second prizes in the 2017 American Prize both for the vocal music division and the choral music division. She also won the Libby Larsen Prize in the International Alliance for Women in Music Competition, and the Merit Award in the Lin Yao Ji Composition Competition in Hong-Kong. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at Rice University, studying with Karim Al-Zand, Shih-Hui Chen, Pierre Jalbert, and Arthur Gottschalk.